Electrical, communication and other industrial cable, as well as wire rope and the like are typically wound on large spools or reels for storage, delivery and dispensing of the product. Such reels may be intended to be returned to their point of origin, such as a cable manufacturer, after the product has been dispensed or they may be nonreturnable.
Existing returnable reels are usually fabricated of wood that has been treated with a preservative such as creosote, or painted, so as to resist weathering and deterioration. Reels made of steel are also known; these, too, are often painted or otherwise treated so as to provide protection against rusting. Wood and steel reels have several disadvantages. Most importantly, despite efforts to protect them from the elements they are subject to deterioration and therefore require constant maintenance. Wood reels, especially, are prone to splintering and breakage, and nails and bolts projecting from such reels pose a safety hazard and can damage the insulation of electrical or communication cable being carried. Moreover, wood reels soak up rain water, increasing their weight by as much as 50%. The dry weight marked on the reel is then meaningless making it impossible for the user to determine how much cable remains on the reel since this determination is usually made by weight.
Because of the space taken up by the reels, the return shipment of empty reels to the cable manufacturer or other point of origin is often highly inefficient, being limited to relatively few reels per truckload. This inefficiency and the attendant costs are particularly significant for long distance shipments. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,767,710; 3,284,021; and 4,066,224 disclose examples of knock-down reels which may be disassembled and shipped or stored as compact packages.
Knock-down reels made of plastic are also known, as illustrated by the aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 3,940,085. Plastic reels are substantially impervious to the elements and require little or no maintenance and do not damage the cable being carried. However, because of strength limitations, plastic reels of the prior art are limited in size and load capacity. For example, the aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 3,940,085 specifies a flange diameter of up to 36 inches. Reels of such small size, however, typically have load capacities substantially less than 2,000 pounds. Existing plastic reels tend to distort under high loads, thereby reducing the uniformity of the windings of the product carried by the reel.
The longevity of prior art reels, regardless of the material used in their construction, is limited because they cannot withstand the rough handling to which reels of this kind are often subjected. For example, prior art reels are easily damaged when dropped from even modest heights, or as a result of other impact loads such as might be imposed by a moving forklift. Prior art high capacity reels (e.g., those having load capacities of 10,000 pounds) also exhibit limited resistance to distortion or flattening when stored in one position for an extended period.
The abuse to which reels are subjected means that many thousands of them must be replaced annually in the United States alone, contributing to inefficiency and waste of resources, especially forest products in the case of wood reels.
It is thus an overall object of the present invention to provide a reel that has superior strength and resistance to impact and distortion, yet is capable of carrying very high loads, for example, in excess of 10,000 pounds.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a high load capacity reel whose components are fabricated of molded plastic.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a high load capacity plastic reel for carrying industrial cable, wire rope or the like, and which has a knock-down construction facilitating compact storage and shipment.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a high load capacity plastic reel whose major components are all made of recycled plastic.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide methods for fabricating large, high load capacity, knock-down plastic reels, that have superior strength and resistance to impact and distortion.